from Facebook: super Girl Scouts meet Supergirl

Aw, this (and the pics posted by Bluejay) made me want to cry, in mostly the happy but also the sad way. :’-) ( Maybe it can get people thinking about how few heroines are depicted in popular culture for both our girls and boys to look up to.

David

I saw the 6 minute trailer and it looked terrible. It reminded me of that SNL Black Widow sketch.

Tonio Kruger

Yeah, right.

Apart from the fact the lead female characters in the trailer and the SNL sketch both work for a magazine run by a female boss, there aren’t that many similarities between the two that I can see.

So begin my quibbles with Supergirl. It works cleverly within a borrowed premise and restrictive parameters to create allegory, but the premise and parameters also work against the allegory, too. When we meet the adult Kara Danvers, she has all the powers and abilities of Superman, but she hides most of them, and let others go fallow. (She hasn’t attempted to fly in years, we’re told.) Liberated from her mission to be Kal’s bodyguard/mentor, Kara hasn’t yet worked out what she should be doing with her life or how she should be using her talents. The influence of her jealous foster sister Alex hasn’t helped: When they were kids, Alex was all too eager to encourage her alienated, extraterrestrial sibling’s understandable if flawed desire for a “normal” life. Like many women, she’s been conditioned to underachieve and feel insecure about her strength for the sake of fitting in. Consequently, Kara is meek to a fault — her version of Superman’s Clark Kent always-apologizing-for-himself bumbler persona is more genuine than performance – and she worries that she’s not living up to her potential. She should be doing great things and be greatly fulfilled. But how? (In this way, Kara also represents the frustrated optimism – and entitlement – of her millennial generation.)

You need to know all of this to understand how Supergirl deals with a dilemma created by its set-up. In most versions of Supergirl, teenage Kara immediately begins super-heroing after arriving on Earth. Hence the name: Supergirl. But Supergirl wants to tell its story with an adult Kara, and it also wants to launch with a classic superhero origin story. These choices complicate the “why now?” of the story. Or rather: Why not sooner? Kara’s busted mission and family influence are given as reasons, and it has led her to this conclusion: “The earth didn’t need another hero.” She’s wrong, of course. In fact, taken literally, it’s shocking anyone could believe such a thing. She works for a major news agency. The suffering of the planet pays her salary! In what cultural bubble was this person raised? The bottle city of Kandor? She should know better. The world needs more heroes!

Tonio Kruger

Well, given all the enthusiasm for superheroes and strong female characters on this site, I didn’t think it would be necessary for me to ask for one but since I was obviously wrong about that, I might as well make it official and say, “Yes, I would like to see such an open thread. If it’s possible.”

Of course, ideally, I would also like to hear your opinion on the show but I realize that there are many reasons why I might have to wait a long while for that to come about. After all, you are a tad busy these days.*

I agree with most of Jensen’s big points and disagree with a few of the little ones. For example, I find origin stories kind of boring. And his comments about millennials are too vague and too sweeping but mostly just…odd.

My main problem with the pilot was that it tried to address the sexist elements of the character but just ended up calling attention to them or making them worse.

My other problem with the pilot was that it just wasn’t very well-written. The showrunners may be able to fix both problems, but I’m not patient enough to watch them try.

Also: The show would be improved tremendously if Mehcad Brooks and Jeremy Jordan switched roles.

But if there’s ever a musical episode featuring Jeremy Jordan, Laura Benanti, and Melissa Benoist, I’ll be very happy to watch it.